The fight for women’s rights is a fight against authoritarianism

Ma, Women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch
Jan 2, 2023

We know progress is never linear, and defence of human rights can be a difficult task. Women’s rights gains, however, are particularly fragile. Often disguised in concepts that are presented as harmless, such as the protection of the family and children, or the protection of societal traditions, governments limit women’s autonomy, as if these restrictions were not politically motivated and did not amount to human-rights violations.

Examples of egregious restrictions on women’s rights are not hard to find. The Chinese government’s population policies treat women as “wombs” subject to forced abortions or forced pregnancies depending on the “needs” of the country; Iran’s morality police have brutally enforced compulsory hijab laws on women; Qatar criminalizes extramarital sex where pregnancy acts as evidence against women; Russia and Turkey are deliberately walking back protections against domestic violence; in Afghanistan, the Taliban are once again denying women and girls education, work and most basic freedoms.

Continued: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-fight-for-womens-rights-is-a-fight-against-authoritarianism/

Abortion and authoritarianism: Why women’s freedom threatens male supremacy

The notion that men are superior to women is the root of all human inequality. That's why we must fight it

By ROBERT S. MCELVAINE
OCTOBER 23, 2022

Will America's future be one of democracy and women's control over their own bodies or one of authoritarianism and forced pregnancy? The two issues most motivating Americans to vote for Democrats in the rapidly approaching midterm elections are far more intertwined than is generally recognized.

At a time when right-wing extremists are hellbent on making American states — or, as many intend the whole nation — into the fictional Republic of Gilead, it is appropriate to turn to Margaret Atwood. "Tyrants and dictators like Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu have often dictated the terms of fertility and criminalized those who did not comply," she pointed out in 2017. "It's no accident that Napoleon banned abortion. He said exactly what he wanted offspring for — cannon fodder. Lovely!"

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/10/23/abortion-and-authoritarianism-why-womens-freedom-threatens-male-supremacy/

While the World Makes Progress on Reproductive Rights, the U.S. Regresses

Why is the U.S. failing to lead the way in securing and protecting abortion rights?

by Kristyn Brandi, MD, MPH
April 24, 2022

In the last few years, a wave of court rulings and laws decriminalizing abortion have swept across Latin America, on the backs of pro-abortion activists like those in Argentina's Green Wave who "did the unthinkable" by delivering unprecedented victories for reproductive rights in the region.

In December 2020 Argentina's legislature made abortion legal up to 14-weeks in pregnancy; last September, Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, paving the way for legalization; and just this past month, Colombia decriminalized abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. The World Health Organization (WHO) just released new abortion care guidelines that affirm a wide range of options for safely managing abortions. And for the first time, WHO recommended health officials and other policymakers recognize that people can safely self-manage all or parts of their abortion with abortion pills or through the use of telehealth services.

Continued: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/98369

24.04.2022

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In ‘freedom convoy’ and other vaccine protests, slogans cross the political aisle

February 17, 2022
Alex Bing, Adjunct Professor in Sociology, Carleton University

The current political climate seems to discourage us from becoming overly invested in any one political slogan in case they suddenly change hands and take on a whole different meaning. But words still matter — perhaps even more so right now.

Politicians, pundits and protesters have appropriated slogans, symbols and ideas from the opposing side throughout the so-called freedom convoy and the protests leading up to it.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/in-freedom-convoy-and-other-vaccine-protests-slogans-cross-the-political-aisle-176793

Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women

By Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks
March/April 2022 (posted Feb 8)
Foreign Affairs

The pantheon of autocratic leaders includes a great many sexists, from Napoléon Bonaparte, who decriminalized the murder of unfaithful wives, to Benito Mussolini, who claimed that women “never created anything.” And while the twentieth century saw improvements in women’s equality in most parts of the world, the twenty-first is demonstrating that misogyny and authoritarianism are not just common comorbidities but mutually reinforcing ills. Throughout the last century, women’s movements won the right to vote for women; expanded women’s access to reproductive health care, education, and economic opportunity; and began to enshrine gender equality in domestic and international law—victories that corresponded with unprecedented waves of democratization in the postwar period. Yet in recent years, authoritarian leaders have launched a simultaneous assault on women’s rights and democracy that threatens to roll back decades of progress on both fronts.

Continued: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-08/women-rights-revenge-patriarchs

USA – The Authoritarian Plan for a National Abortion Ban

Some on the right want the Supreme Court to go beyond ending Roe.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist, NY Times
April 5, 2021

The anti-abortion movement was never going to stop with overturning Roe v. Wade.

For years, Republicans have argued that their goal was to return the issue of abortion to the states. At no point was this believable; since 1984, the Republican Party platform has called for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Having spent decades denouncing abortion as a singular moral evil, the anti-abortion movement will not be content to return to a pre-Roe status quo, where abortion was legal in some places but not others.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/05/opinion/us-abortion-bans.html

Will Trump’s anti-abortion Geneva Consensus fall apart?

The pro-choice Biden administration is very unlikely to support the declaration, signed just two weeks before the 2020 US elections.

Kerry Cullinan
25 January 2021

The anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, signed two weeks before the 2020 presidential elections, brings together some of the most authoritarian and anti-women regimes in the world – reflecting who President Trump counted as his international allies by the end of his four-year reign.

The declaration claims that “there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion”. It declares that the ‘traditional family’ – meaning a married, heterosexual couple and their biological children – is the “fundamental group unit of society”, and each country has “the sovereign right” to make their own laws on abortion.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/will-trumps-anti-abortion-geneva-consensus-fall-apart/

‘This is war’: Inside Poland’s abortion protests

Activists in Poland are declaring war after a court decided to restrict abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities.

16 Nov 2020
22-minute podcast

Poland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. So, when a Polish court tried to restrict abortion even further, it led to mass protests – the largest the country has seen since the fall of communism. Members of Poland’s emboldened feminist movement walk us through the protests and tell us what to expect next.

In this episode: Scholar and writer Agnieszka Graff; Gosia Wochowska and Wiktoria Sakowicz of Gals4Gals Lodz; student and activist Kajetan Chlipalski.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2020/11/16/poland-abortion-protests/

USA – The “Pro-Life” Movement is Built on Christian Supremacy, and its Rhetoric is Increasingly Dangerous

The “Pro-Life” Movement is Built on Christian Supremacy, and its Rhetoric is Increasingly Dangerous

Apr 11 2019 | Reproaction
By: Shireen Shakouri

As I celebrated Persian New Year with family and friends recently, my heart was torn between elation for the start of spring and an exciting year ahead, and sorrow for those facing fear and loss after the massacre against the Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Christchurch terrorist began his hateful manifesto explaining his atrocities with, “It’s the birthrates, it’s the birthrates, it’s the birthrates.” Jelani Cobb recently noted in The New Yorker that many of the other terrorists who inspired this attack have also been highly concerned with the idea of controlling reproduction to prevent white Christians being ‘replaced’ by other groups – the bitter irony being that these terrorists largely are descendants of missionaries and colonizers who replaced the populations of the lands they now inhabit, [1] oftentimes through reproductive control.

Continued: https://reproaction.org/the-pro-life-movement-is-built-on-christian-supremacy-and-its-rhetoric-is-increasingly-dangerous/